IN HER FRESHMAN YEAR at Episcopal High School, Vanessa Ramirez was surprised to discover that the headmaster, Edward C. Becker, knew who she was and often came to see her and her friend Lupita. The two girls were struggling with the homework, adjusting to a system where they no longer had their teachers’ home numbers and permission to call at night. But Becker told them they were doing great. “I’ve talked to your teachers,” he said, “and they say they can’t believe how mature you are, how much more mature you are than these other kids, how respectful you are.”
It occurred to them that the old KIPP values had a place, even in a very un-KIPP-like school. By habit, courtesy of having had Feinberg and Levin as teachers at an impressionable age, they automatically paid attention, sat up, and asked questions. If nobody else was participating—even in a fancy private school, ninth graders were not that keen on showing off in class—Vanessa and Lupita were always among the few students who would try.
Gema Porras, one of Vanessa’s non-KIPP friends at Burbank who had joined her when she returned to KIPP, was at another private school and called to say she had discovered an exciting junior-year-abroad program. It was in Zaragoza, Spain. They would live with host families and improve their Spanish. Vanessa got tentative approval from her mother, who was confident that such an exclusive program would not accept her daughter. When it did, and Becker said her Episcopal scholarship would cover the cost, Sara Ramirez panicked. “You mean you actually sent in the application?” she said to her daughter.
Vanessa’s mother, as Vanessa had expected, called Feinberg. Vanessa was prepared for that. She told him this was something she wanted to do. She was firm with him, as he had often been with her. He was learning, despite his lack of any firsthand experience as a father, that children grew up and you had to start listening to what they were saying.
“Do you think it is okay that she go on this?” her mother asked her old teacher.
“Well,” Feinberg said, “I am kind of nervous about it, but I am sure this will help her grow. And it seems like a great program, so yeah, let her go.”
She and Gema were the only Latinas in Zaragoza. The rest of the group were non-Hispanic middle-class Americans. They had a wonderful year. Levin visited, amazed at how mature they had become. When Vanessa returned for her senior year, she had an entirely different attitude about Episcopal. Her soccer friends were happy to see their swift-footed wing back on the team. She no longer looked for ethnic slights. She got into several colleges and decided to go to Occidental in Los Angeles, another step in her campaign to get out of Texas and see the world.
Occidental, a beautifully landscaped, very selective school, had its drawbacks. Most of the other Hispanic students were well off, with little understanding of her upbringing in the barrio. She started as an economics for business and management major, but when she developed an interest in education courses, her adviser suggested sociology instead. Every other Latino he knew was a sociology major. Wouldn’t that suit her too? She said no.
She graduated in 2006 and realized that her fascination with how children learned might qualify her for a job in the growing KIPP empire. She spent a year working at the KEY Academy in D.C. on the KIPP to College program, an effort to keep in touch with KIPP middle school graduates and help them navigate the college admissions process while they were in high school. She moved back to Houston to be the KIPP to College feeder-pattern manager. She became an officer in the KIPP Alumni Association, which helped uncertain KIPP alumni, people like her, apply the values they had learned in their very odd middle school—and in the new KIPP elementary and high schools—to a wider and scarier world.
She owed KIPP a great deal, she thought, but KIPP also owed her something. Back in middle school, she had been such a frugal girl, never cashing in the steadily mounting earnings on her weekly paycheck. It wasn’t real money, but she still rebelled against the funny-money prices at the KIPP store, such as three hundred dollars for a T-shirt. She was saving her earnings to buy something big. Like many KIPP students, she never did. Although paycheck points helped determine who was going to go on trips, the teachers never charged the bank accounts of those who went.
Vanessa, now a young woman with a college degree and firm views on personal finance, figured she had $1,087 KIPP dollars in her KIPP account. It was out there somewhere. Working at Mr. Feinberg’s new headquarters building in southwest Houston, out among the warehouses near Beltway 8, she would have time to roam around the offices. She would find it.
DOMINIQUE YOUNG, IN HER MIND if not in fact, was a convicted felon as she prepared to leave Saint Mark’s. She listened quietly to Levin’s long, anguished, rambling rant about how disappointed he was with her. She began to cry. Her life was over. She told him she did not see any way to go forward. “You aren’t going to worry about that,” he said. “What you are going to worry about now is what I am talking to you about.”
He left her at her mother’s new home in Temple Hills, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., and went to work getting her back on track. He found a place for her at Oldfields, a private girls’ school north of Baltimore. It was January 2003. They would not allow her to graduate that year. She would have to repeat the second semester of her junior year. He secured financial support for that tuition, persuading her mother to sign the papers.
When Dominique expressed some concern about attending a girls’ school, she found he was still very angry and spoke exactly as she imagined a father would. “I don’t care,” he said. “You got in. You’re going.” Soon, however, she realized she loved Oldfields. There was no more preening for boys, no more gender power games. Her grades went up. She scored a 1220 on the SAT and got into the University of Maryland at College Park.
Her mother, happy to have her oldest child nearby and in college, found herself reconnecting with some old family ambitions. She told Dominique about auditions for the third season of the network reality show, Making the Band, with P. Diddy, aka Sean Combs, as host and judge. Dominique passed the audition and became a star during the ten episodes, showing off the best singing voice and sharpest wit. She presented herself as a tough Bronx homegirl. Asked about a marathon all the contestants had to run in Central Park, Dominique’s televised comment was, “I don’t run anywhere, unless I’m being chased.” She survived until the show’s finale, when her poor dance skills led Combs to rule her out. But she had won considerable notoriety. She found an agent and began to sing rhythm and blues in clubs all over the Washington area, while still working toward her degree in communications.
When she told Levin of her musical ambitions, he surprised her. “You’re young,” he said. “Give yourself three years. Work on the music.” He had started teaching the same way. Teaching had intrigued him, but he had not known if he could make it work for him. His first three years in the classroom had made the difference.
“You’ve got room,” he told her. “Don’t be depressed about not making it or depressed about being broke. You’re still a kid. You still have room to do those things.”